Posted by Question II on October 15, 2006 at 16:48:07
Posted by lydia on October 15, 2006 at 08:37:02
In Reply to: Re: alternatives to spanking posted by Q II on October 15, 2006 at 03:03:33:
Wow you guys seem so fanatical. So there are parents who don't know how to raise children and abuse happens. So we should make laws against such happenings. Never mind that the MAJORITY of children are being raised in quite a normal household with parents who do their best and care for the children. They know the difference between abuse and admistering appropiate disciple for the health and safety of the child.
I find it totally inappropiate to label people who are balanced to either being blind or getting a thrill out of it. (sadism)
By sensationalising the discussion you take away any chance of real discussion.
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(This discussion is a continuation from the Journeys Board answering Lydia’s post)
From your first paragraph I copy above, I agree with “Never mind that the MAJORITY of children are being raised in quite a normal household with parents who do their best and care for the children.” I am not sure about the first part of the sentence about “normal household” because I don’t have numbers on that but I believe the vast majority of parents do their best and do care for their children, even in a cult like The Family. It is their understanding of “best” that is in question as well as the actual action that results regardless of their “best” intentions. We often don’t do the best, even if we know what it is.
I am not sure about your last sentence: “They know the difference between abuse and admistering appropiate disciple for the health and safety of the child”. In fact, I don’t think it is accurate. Most of us replicate what we have experienced and have assimilated. We do what we know and what we have learned. We may try our best because our objective is not failure but how do we know that our way is the best way to handle every situation?
To answer this question, and to maintain our sanity when facing some dilemmas, we use a simple test: the personal experience test. If we had tried something, or something had happened to us, and after we had evaluated the results we decided it was beneficial, we tend to accept it is good – otherwise, it is bad. It is a very subjective response and we do it so automatically that we hardly think about it. We know what worked with us or for us, and that is what we try again with our children.
The conflict is that experientially learned behavior is stronger than analytically learned behavior. That is why family abuse is part of a generational cycle. Not everybody that has been abused becomes an abuser but most everybody who abuses has been abused.
This is not a simple issue and we should not pretend to know all the answers individually as some do. I am not saying you behave this way but this is a complex topic and people who read and comment should be less interested in defending themselves. It is not sensationalizing what takes “away any chance of real discussion”, but generalizing our own subjective perspectives. Again, I am not saying you are doing this but to understand a problem as deeply rooted as corporal punishment is among cult members and ex-cult members, one should shed out subjective measures.
If something worked in somebody’s life, and also worked in their children’s life, that’s fine but it doesn’t mean that it should become the recipe for everybody, even in a whole community where public policies are decided by the majority and is little variance among that majority on how to do things.
As a little research design to raise even more the level of this conversation, imagine that we can first separate the population into two groups: those who believe in corporal punishment above a certain degree of pain and those who either don’t believe in corporal punishment at all or believe in it but never above a certain threshold of pain. It is already very difficult to decide where that threshold should be, or even how to measure it. What is not painful to one person may be extremely painful to another. But let’s say we can measure that and we can make the distinction between these two groups.
Then, as a second division, we also categorize (somehow) the normalcy of parenting or attitude towards their children and we come up with two groups: “normal” parents and “abnormal” parents. This is also very difficult because how are we going to define what “normal” parenting is? Who is going to decide? One person may think that is wrong to let their children sleepover on somebody else’s house, other people think this is normal. Some people think it is okay to have a drink of wine with the food, others don’t. So, how do we determine this normalcy? But let’s say we can do all of this and so we end up with 4 groups:
a. Disburse pain = YES; normal parent = YES
b. Disburse pain = YES; normal parent = NO
c. Disburse pain = NO; normal parent = YES
d. Disburse pain = NO; normal parent = NO
All of the sudden, in this very simplistic view of the world, we see that there is a large discrepancy of opinions. Considering that the results obtained by modifying public policy (and reading the report it appears that Sweden has a COMPREHENSIVE public policy and not just one law about corporal punishment), it is possible to achieve some major positive changes by examining these issues.
They are difficult but to start with the notion that all parents know better, it is not enough. Not only history but also facts suggest that parents actually don’t know better. They do, we do, the best we can but closing our eyes to possible better ways it is part of the blindness I was talking about. We are afraid that we will see something else we did that was wrong and want to avoid that at all cost. Of course, I am saying WE in the sense of us, human beings. We love and care for our offspring, and we try to do our best, and therefore don’t feel too good when somebody else comes along telling us that we didn’t do a good job. I am not saying that you or anybody else has done a bad job. What I am saying is that many people, including me, are doing a parenting job that can be improved.
I am not writing all of this for some sort of personal gain, or because my ego needs it, or because I am trying to put anybody down. I write this because I think this is an important subject and am interested in learning more about the subject. I obviously don’t believe in corporal punishment and I do consider myself a normal parent, as many people here do. But contrary to many people here, I think one needs to examine our beliefs by seeing what has not work and what has work elsewhere. Running away into isolation in the bedroom and shutting off the door is a sign of repressed anger and escapism that normally results in covering up the truth for the sake of feeling good. What is wrong with that? Nothing unless a person tries to push that onto others as if that were the only reality.